Weakness... our greatest strength??

Well, we are back from 2 weeks in Tasmania. We had a good holiday, all in all and enjoyed being away and having a real break. A holiday with young children however, will never be completely restful - as we well know. I will probably take a few blogs over the next week to update on some of our holiday. The first will have to be what ended up consuming a lot of our thinking and energy.

In the last 6 months or so, Caelan has developed quite a number of fears - often about quite irrational things. Firstly, it was over things with loud noises, like lawn mowers, vaccum cleaners, tractors, power tools etc. It then developed into a fear of most animals (although completely inconsistent) especially when they moved towards him or made sounds - like cows mooing etc. Then perhaps because of the association Caelan made between noise and objects, he started to fear the object itself even when it was making any noise. Thus he is scared of his Opa's farm truck (even when it isn't turned on). Caelan loves all these things in toys and books - especially trucks but not in 'real life'.

So I figured the plane trip to Tassie would be interesting, but nothing prepared us for the 1.5hour journey we had with Caelan. In hindsight, I should of prepared Caelan a lot more since his last plane trip was one year ago. We talked about going on a plane. He was all excited about it and talked about it for days. He was great at the airport, getting onto the plane, he settled into his seat, proud to be doing up his seatbelt. As soon as the plane started take off, Caelan flipped out. He pretty much screamed the whole way telling us he wanted to get off the plane. He was so pretrified. It was a very traumatic experience for everyone involved. Nothing would distract him. Adriaan spent most of the journey standing in the back cabin with Caelan clinging onto him for dear life. He finally screamed himself to sleep for about 20min before we had to belt him back in for landing.

We felt horrible. There was so much fear in his eyes that could not be consoled. We could not remove him from the situation even though he was pleading to be removed. As you can imagine, contemplating the trip home took a lot of our thinking, energy and conversation during our two week stay. If there was any other way home, I would have taken it. But Caelan is just as scared of boats as he is planes. And the boat trip would take a lot longer!!

We tested some Phenergan on Caelan a few days before flying out - it had little or no effect on him!! So we knew we had to face the inevitable. We spent a number of days talking about the plane, making the plane sound fun and reading books about the plane trip. I went shopping with Caelan for special plane treats -which he could only open on the plane. The biggest hit was 'Cars' toys - Sally and Filmore. This hard work paid off. The flight home was not without fear or anxiety, but he sat on Adriaan's lap for the whole journey, played with his new cars and ate 'circles' (cheese rings). The key was keeping him from getting himself into a heightened panicked state in which we could not bring him down from. We were mentally exhausted at the end of it.

Caelan is a sensitive kid. He is prone to moodiness - his moods can change very quickly. He is cautious and doesn't take many risks without knowing some security. He seems very aware of his own body's capability and doesn't push much beyond. At present we are struggling with him saying he is scared of silly things - like 'Caelan's light' and the bath plug! My prayer for him is that his current weaknesses will become one of his greatest strengths. That God will grow in him a sensitivity to his own and others emotions, a compassionate heart, thoughtfulness, care and a good fear of God with a pronounced sense of the urgency in making Jesus' light shine.